


keep the wolves away

by Mus_musculus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aromantic, Fantastic Racism, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Intersex, M/M, Misgendering, Sexual Assault, Team as Family, dyadism, weird Exandrian firbolgs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 19:01:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17085911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mus_musculus/pseuds/Mus_musculus
Summary: Caduceus is a man of faith. He's terrified, but he knows they're coming to save him.





	keep the wolves away

**Author's Note:**

> *POINTS EMPHATICALLY AT TAGS* 
> 
> This one was originally written for the kink meme but it got all emotional and weird instead of sexy. I mean, I guess if you still think its sexy that's fine, you're allowed. I'm not a cop.

His attackers don’t expect what they find, when they undress him, and Caduceus uses their surprise and confusion as cover to cast _Sending_ to Jester, hoping against hope that she is still downstairs. The others went out earlier this morning, and will surely be outside his range.

“Hello”, he whispers, as quietly as he can. “Please come to my room. Three men ambushed me. They are...sexually aggressive. I cannot fight them. One is a wizard. Bring the others.”

There is a long pause, and then he hears Jester’s shocked voice- not with his ears, but directly inside his head.

_"Caduceus? Oh no, no! Yes, of course we’re coming to get you! Stay there! I mean-"_

He cannot hear her speak out loud, but in this second pause he pictures her counting feverishly on her fingers, and smiles despite himself.

_"-get out if you can, but we’re coming! Soon!"_

Well, that’s nice. Jester is reassuringly predictable, in some ways. He can feel her outrage on his behalf ringing clear and sharp in his mind, like a bell, and he’s quite sure that none of these men will make it out of his room alive. For that reason he had considered speaking his message out loud, but if they panicked and ran it was possible that they would kill him first, so that he couldn’t identify them later. Fear is neither an elegant nor a safe weapon to wield against strangers. You never quite know what they’ll do.

The strangers have regrouped, and Caduceus sighs. Pinned to the floor as he is, in the grasp of the wizard’s arcane hand, he cannot move. He had been making his way up the stairs of the inn only minutes ago, when its shimmering phantom fingers had wrapped around his torso and pinioned his arms, and then someone’s flesh and blood hand had covered his mouth. He had fought them instinctively, but they had caught him alone and off his guard in a place of safety and rest, and his struggling had been futile. He has stopped resisting now, saving his energy for the fight he knows is coming, when the rest of the party finds him.

The man who had been removing his smallclothes gets back to it, tugging them off completely and then getting his hands behind Caduceus’ knees to push his legs up and spread him out.

(There is something small and selfish in his bounding heart, something which demands attention, which wants to scream and writhe no matter how futile or undignified it would be. But Caduceus has had many seasons of experience quieting that part of himself.)

“I could have sworn it was a male”, the man who is just watching says, returning to the subject of their confusion. Caduceus rolls his eyes. It goes unseen; these people aren’t looking at his face. He feels fingers trail with perverse gentleness up the furred lips of his vulva to play with his phallus. 

“They’re probably all one sex”, suggests the third man, the wizard. He is standing further back, keeping an eye on the locked door and holding his hand out in midair, to grip Caduceus with unseen force. He does not seem especially interested in the sordid details of his friends’ conquest, but he had turned to look when they first exclaimed in surprise. “Giantkin, yeah? They’re pretty strange folk.”

“I am male”, Caducues says, and the man holding his legs startles.

“It can talk through this spell?” he asks, and the wizard gives him a withering glance. 

“You’re the one who wanted his mouth free, Skrain”.

The second man ignores both of his companions to address Caduceus directly. “Sorry, but you don’t exactly...look male”, he says, with incongruous delicacy. As if Caduceus was having a normal conversation. As if he had chosen this.

“Yes, I do” he says. Tall and scrawny. Flat-chested. Unshaven beard, since he'd not had time to wash since they'd gotten back to Zadash. “You didn’t realize I was a twin, but you must have known I was male when you attacked me.”

“A...twin”, the man repeats.

“Yes, I- do humans bear only single offspring? Do you not know the word?”

The first man, Skrain, lunges forward and grabs Caduceus by the jaw.

“Don’t you get smart with us” he growls. He has big, strong hands, which reach all the way to Caduceus’ temporomandibular joints, exerting a precise, mechanical pressure. Caduceus’ mouth is pushed open. A threat.

But Caduceus is not being ‘smart’. Twinning is basic fact, the natural order of things. Their ignorance bewilders him. And he must walk a delicate line here, if he is to manage not to come across as condescending, not to damage the fragile pride of his captors while speaking as simply as he would to a child. When Skrain lets him go he works his jaw back and forth until it feels right, and then answers their (rude) questions with one of his own.

“What do you know of how bodies change and grow?” he asks, “in the womb?”

They stare blankly at him, and as Caduceus readjusts his expectations of their intelligence downward once again, he is hit with the unexpected gift of a memory- he is sitting with Octavia, telling her about the insects in the garden. The day is summersweet and warm, and his little sister’s curiosity bubbles over in endless questions. He feels slow and stupid and annoyed trying to keep up with her, to find answers which will satisfy her young, hungry mind. _But how does it know to be a swallowtail, when it’s just caterpillar soup? How does it know its not a skipper, or a glasswing?_ His patience had been tested that day, but it had held, for he so dearly loved her, and in that memory he finds his patience once again.

“Before we are born”, he says, “our bodies already have plans for how we are to grow. These plans are just random chance, the recombination of our parents’ bodies into new shapes. If a body which means to be female is formed in the same womb as a body which means to be male- like my brother and I- the Wildmother intervenes. Since their plans are incompatible, the goddess alone decides which course they will both take.”

There’s a moment of silence as the three men absorb and process this, and then the second man settles back onto his heels and snaps his fingers in sudden understanding. “She’s a freemartin”, he tells the others.

“A what?” Caduceus asks, thrown by the unknown term as well as the dizzying switch of pronouns. Common is difficult enough to follow at the best of times.

“What is that, Esar?” the wizard echoes, with obvious interest.

“It, uh, it happens with cows sometimes? One time our neighbor back home, you know, my family’s farm? His prize cow had twins, a bull calf and a heifer. But the heifer never went into heat, never calved. Years and years they kept her, just ‘cause her ma gave milk so good, but she just got bigger and meaner, and it wasn’t until they called someone out to look at her that they figured out she was a freemartin. Totally infertile. Somehow all the fluids get mixed up, with twins, and they don't turn out right. Happens to sheep, too, I think. I never heard of it happening to people.”

Skrain raises his eyebrows at Esar with a smirk, clearly calling Caduceus’ personhood into question. 

“Well. You know what I mean”, the former farmer says.

“Yes, thank you for the livestock lesson”, Skrain says, scathing. After releasing Caduceus' jaw he had moved on to running his fingers through long pink hair, and now he is stroking the skin of his captive's face and neck. He seems to be growing bored of talk. The look in his eyes makes dread pool in Caduceus’ gut like cold water.

“I am not female”, he repeats, desperate to make them understand. “I have a vestigial organ, yes, from a time before my body understood what the Wildmother wanted for me.” _For us._ For him and Ascelpius. Caduceus falters slightly at the familiar ache of thinking about his brother, and has some difficulty finding his next words. “If you...mount me, my arousal will not ease your way. And it is shallow, a blind passage. I do not even know if what you want is possible.” 

“Because no one’s ever tried” Skrain replies, and his eyes are hungry.

Surely Jester should have been here by now. When Caduceus had gone upstairs he had left her drawing in her sketchbook at the corner table- she was so close! But of course he had asked her to gather the others first, so the two of them would not be outnumbered. And the Mighty Nein were scattered throughout Zadash- at the marketplace, the park, the baths. He pictures Jester bursting through a door carved in the air to gasp a warning, pictures Fjord’s eyes growing thunderous and dark with anger. He imagines them all looking up from their books and turning away from their errands, a small army mustered to come to his aid. Any moment now.

But then again, perhaps not. Perhaps someone has waylaid them. Captured them, the way he was caught. The way their Molly died. They way he had first met Yasha and Fjord and Jester, chained in a dungeon. These people, much as he has grown to like and trust them, are not invincible.

Caducues’ attention is drawn forcefully back to the present by the sound of a belt being undone, and he closes his eyes.

At least they don’t draw it out any longer, no more touching or talking. Skrain slicks him up with oil, which Caduceus refuses to be grateful for, and then mounts him without preamble or ceremony. A human cock can fit inside him, barely. This wasn’t information he’d especially wanted to have. 

His attacker groans, not into his neck but against his chest- Caduceus is small, but humans are smaller. The room is utterly quiet except for the noises of the man working upon him. Caduceus can feel very little of what is happening- perhaps his nerves do not function as a female’s would, or perhaps sex is always like this. He has no basis for comparison. But he is mostly unsurprised to learn that he can feel only the burning stretch where his body is held open, and a sort of dull pressure inside. 

The man on top of him can certainly feel it, for he has begun shoving himself into Caduceus quick and hard. Like the deer in autumn, except this mating lasts longer. No doe would tolerate such brutish treatment for long. They’re sensible people, deer.

“Fuck”, Skrain gasps. “Barl, you have to try this.” The wizard shrugs. He looks uncomfortable, keeps glancing at the door like he wants to leave. His thoughts are not hard to read on his face, and in any other situation, Caduceus would try to convince him that his second thoughts are right- that he is above this, that his power is worth more than serving the whims of men like Skrain. But the breath is being driven out of him by the relentless thrust of hips into his body, and somehow the feeling of it drives away his words, which escape his grasp like wisps of fog. He cannot speak.

After a short eternity, Skrain shudders and empties himself inside Caduceus. It is a distasteful sensation. When he pulls out he stands up, tucks himself back into his pants, and immediately pushes Esar forward.

“Go on”, he says, slapping the other man’s back. “It really is just like a woman.”

Caduceus does not open his eyes.

He feels smaller, more hesitant hands on his hips as Esar takes the same position on top of him. Caduceus had managed to keep himself relaxed, the first time, but now that his body knows so intimately what is about to happen and what it is going to feel like, his muscles have gone tense. The guard struggles to mount him, like a too-eager stag with bad aim, jabbing the air. Skrain, who has settled down cross-legged on the floor to watch, laughs. And then suddenly his hands dart out and pinch two of Caduceus’ nipples, and he twists, viciously hard. Caduceus yelps, and his attention is jerked away from his groin and onto the twin points of pain on the right side of his belly. He writhes against his magical bonds, and as he moves, somehow the head of Esar’s cock slips right up inside him.

Skrain lets him go, still laughing, and Caduceus gasps as the pain blooms. 

“Fuck off” Esar snaps, glaring at his friend. “I don’t need your help.”

“Looked like you did to me” Barl says, amused.

Esar swears at him, and the other two laugh again. His cock is big, bigger than Skrain’s, and although he has penetrated Caduceus, he’s still struggling to work himself deeper. He pushes forward and Caduceus winces as another bright flash of pain runs through him, this time followed by genuine fear. No matter how much they hurt him, this just isn’t going to work.

“Fuck it”, Esar says, pulling out. “That’s not happening. I’m going back to plan A”.

Plan A...oh, right, they had been expecting a male victim in the first place. Barl says “ugh” under his breath but twists his hand in midair, and Caduceus is spun around onto his front. Dizzy and disoriented, he isn’t quick enough to catch himself with his hands, and he lands on his face. Esar doesn’t seem to mind. He seems bolder now that he doesn’t have to look at Caduceus’ face, and begins to explore, stroking the soft down of Caduceus’ thighs. Skrain hands him the bottle of oil, and then Caducues feels slick fingers press inside him. The sensation is invasive, but not unpleasant. Caduceus doesn’t have much time to think about that, though, because Skrain grasps his chin and pushes three of his fingers into Caduceus’ mouth.

Caduceus feels his brain shudder and overheat. For a long moment he is simply held there, suspended between the two of them. Their fingers work inside him. His fingers scrabble against the floor, trying and failing to push himself up onto his hands and knees. The two of them do not speak, but simply push him back and forth between them. He feels, for the first time, the hot pulse of blood between his legs, making him stiffen and long for touch. His body, trying so desperately to make sense of what is happening to it, has decided that the correct response is arousal. Caduceus no longer has any power in this situation, not knowledge to hold over their heads, not even his own physical indifference. He feels utterly lost. 

Eventually Esar pushes Caduceus’ knees up underneath him, to give him a better angle as he guides his cock inside. Caduceus cannot tell if he wants to buck towards the pressure or away from it, so he just sucks helplessly at the fingers in his mouth. Skrain moans. He’s hard again, and he is going to put himself into Caduceus’ mouth soon, and there’s nothing whatsoever Caduceus can do about it. They take him and take him, and he is beginning to lose track of how long he’s been here, how long he has been an object for these people to use. He is fully hard, now, and flushed pink from head to toe. Is this what sex is supposed to be like? There is a quick jolt of pleasure ever time Esar thrusts into him, then a wickedly slow withdrawal while Skrain pushes forward into his throat. He can’t touch himself, can’t do anything but hold himself up. He wants to come, but he doesn’t _want_ to want to, doesn’t want any of this, but his body has gone so warm and pliant now, content to let them share him. Just taking it and taking it. He can feel his toes clench and uncurl as the rhythm pushes him further and further along towards- something, some parody of satisfaction. Caduceus, overwhelmed, feels sound well up in his throat and can’t bite it back.

Skrain looks down at Caduceus when he hears it, smiling his mean, toothy smile. “Oh?” he asks, “You like that?” And he’s just about to say something else when Jester breaks down the door.

There’s an explosion of splinters as the wood cracks beneath her fists and splits open in her claws. Her hand reaches through the wreckage and gropes for the doorknob, and Caduceus can hear her swearing a blue streak on the other side. _Ha_ , he thinks, still fuzzyheaded. _Blue. That’s funny._ Finally she finds it, unlocks it, and pushes the half-busted door open. 

Esar and Skrain scrambled off of him as soon as they’d heard the door break, but are still in disarray, with their pants half-buttoned. Barl, badly startled, has finally dropped his spell. Caduceus uses his newfound freedom to roll up into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest to hide himself. He is sore, and he is heartsick, and he is still hard, but most of all he is quite certain that his friends have this fight well in hand without him.

He’s right. Caleb knows better than to throw fire around in such a limited space, with civilians below stairs, so he’s hanging back with Yasha. Caduceus sees Nott get Esar with two crossbow bolts in a row, one in his heart and one in his liver. Jester obliterates Skrain with an unusually powerful _Inflict Wounds_. Beau takes Barl down to the floor with her staff and pins him while Fjord brings the falchion down across his neck- like a chef’s knife, Caduceus thinks- and then it’s over. He can feel the spray of blood drying on his face.

Jester throws herself onto her knees next to him the instant the dust settles. Shaking, she alternates between laying healing hands upon him and using her sleeves to wipe away the tears which continuously overflow from her big, blue eyes. 

“I’m so sorry, Cad” she says, sniffling. “There are magic wards on half the city now, and I took me ages to find everyone, and we just weren’t fast enough, and I am so, _so_ sorry.”

He can feel the pain leaving his body, his limbs awakening with fresh energy, and still Jester continues to pour her magic into him, as if she could wash away the memory of what has happened along with the physical traces. Caduceus is very fond of her.

Fjord sighs.

“Jess, couldn’t you have waited a minute? We have three human corpses up here and now there’s not a scratch on Clay. It looks...bad.”

Jester, her eyes swollen and red, still manages to glare at him with righteous rage. “No, I couldn’t have waited, Fjord!” she cries. “I don’t care what it looks like, they _hurt_ him-”

“I’ll speak for you”, comes a new voice from the doorway, and Caduceus looks up to see the innkeeper, a thin older woman. Jan, he thinks her name was. Her eyes are hard and the muscles in her face are taut with anger. “We all knew Skrain was a creep, but I couldn’t do fuck-all about it. He never quite crossed the lines in front of witnesses. Always had his shitty friends to back up his alibis. Scared more than one girl into recanting. Don’t know what he was thinking, jumping someone in here like that. Little idiot just got cocky, I guess.”

She presses coin into Fjord’s hand and turns to make her way back down the stairs. “I’ll fetch the Crownsguard, tell them some version of the truth. You get that child a hot bath on me. As my thanks for clearing out the vermin.”

“I’m older than you” Caduceus says, gathering himself to stand. “I’m not a child”. The words sound petulant even as he says them, and his ears droop in embarrassment as Jan scoffs gently at him.

“Yeah, I know your people, son. You’re what, 80? 85? Don’t let him give you that wise elder shit” she says to Beau and Fjord, and then she troops back down the stairs. 

“A bath sounds nice”, Caduceus says, into the silence.

 

\---

 

By the grace of the Mother, his teammates are able to wrap the legality of the whole thing up and put it away without involving him at all. Once he is clean, damp, and wrapped in a robe and a thick down comforter, Caduceus goes to sit on the stairs. This is where the men found him earlier, and he knows that whatever happens above where the stairs turn at a right angle to form the landing is invisible to people below. He sits just out of sight, and listens. The guards ask several times to question the alleged victim. Fjord refuses point blank, in a tone so scrupulously deferential they hardly realize that's what he's doing. Caduceus is unspeakably grateful for his thoughtfulness, for everyone's concern. When he’d come out of the bath earlier (and it had been a long, long bath) he’d found Beau leaning against the wall beside the door like a bodyguard, scowling at passersby. 

The law is satisfied, the blood and bodies are cleared away, and they are assigned new rooms. Caduceus isn’t involved with any of it. The Mighty Nein are guilt-ridden, all of them, and won’t let him lift a finger, even to make dinner. So he lies in bed, hours earlier than he would usually retire, and does not sleep. Does his best not to think. He can’t make himself pray, not yet. 

Eventually, Nott drags her bedroll into his room and dumps it on the floor. She meets his eyes with a defiant glare, as if daring him to comment, and he just pats the bed, inviting her up. She hops onto the mattress and curls up at Caduceus’ feet, back against the wall, for all the world as if he were Caleb. Her tiny, ferocious presence is more comforting than he expects it to be, and at some point he drifts off to sleep. He wakes again some time after midnight, to see Nott’s eyes glowing yellow in the dark, reflecting the light of the moon.

“You’re still awake?” he whispers, and she crawls over to him. He throws a blanket over their heads, so they won't disturb Fjord, who Nott apparently allowed to crash in the other bed at some point while Caduceus was asleep.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.”

“I just can’t sleep.”

“Mmm. Thinking about something?”

Her eyes are sad. “You. What you said last time we were here.”

“What did I say?”

“That you were a virgin.”

“Oh. Yes. That disturbs you?”

“Its just that-" she squirms around under the covers, her breath hot in the stuffy space, and drops her eyes away from his. "Its just that my first time was- like that, like what happened to you. And for a long time I didn’t know that it could be any different, because I didn’t have anything good to compare it to. I don’t want that for you, Mr. Clay. For anyone.”

Caduceus is not terribly surprised to hear this, from the little he knows of her life story. He wonders a little who had changed her frame of reference- Yeza or Caleb? Then he sets that (rude) curiosity aside, along with a brief flash of (unfair) anger that he now has to soothe her pain when he was the one injured. He knows that this type of injury lives in the body, can already feel the pain of it settling into his bones and nerves. Nott is feeling his terror and helplessness tonight as surely as if she had been the one in that room.

“You needn’t worry”, he says. “I know what love is.”

She pats his face, her eyes luminous and watery with unshed tears. “Good”, she says. “That’s good.”

Caduceus doesn’t tell her that the idea of being loved like that feels stifling; just another type of violation. When he thinks of the type of love that Nott and Jester covet, he feels the phantom sensation of hands over his mouth, inside him, holding him down. What truly makes him feel loved is Nott's presence here with him, ready to kill to keep her family safe. It is Beau at his door, Jester at his side, Fjord guarding his privacy. Caleb's silver thread around them at night. Yasha's quiet support. All the love he needs can be found here, in the tight circle they have drawn around him. Like a herd of bison would guard their calves, horns lowered, to keep the wolves away. 

He has been alone for too long, has Caduceus Clay. He misses his sisters dearly, misses his parents, misses...at least the _concept_ of Asclepius, the idea of a brother, if not the reality. He misses his certainty that the Wildmother would always guide and protect him.

But at least he is no longer alone.

Nott falls asleep eventually, too exhausted and wrung out to keep up her self-imposed vigil. Caduceus tucks her in beside him. He does not close his eyes again for a long, long time.


End file.
